Washington, D.C.
Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel offered a raw and personal account of the moment his show, Jimmy Kimmel Live, was abruptly pulled off the air by ABC executives. Speaking candidly on Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show, Kimmel admitted the experience felt like an “emotional roller coaster” that was “very strange” at the time.
Recounting the day the decision came down, Kimmel explained the unusual circumstances: “It was about 3 p.m.. We tape our show at 4:30. I’m in my office, typing away as I usually do.” He then received a phone call from ABC executives.
“As far as I knew, they didn’t even know I was doing a show previous to this, so I have like five people who work in my office with me so the only private place to go is the bathroom. So I go into the bathroom,” he recalled.
“And I’m on the phone with the ABC executives and they say, ‘Listen, we wanna take the temperature down. We’re concerned about what you’re gonna say tonight and we decided that the best route is to take the show off the air tonight.’ I said, ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ and they said, ‘Well, we think it’s a good idea.’ And then there was a vote and I lost the vote.”
The severity of the situation immediately hit him. “I put my pants back on and I walked out to my office… I said, ‘They’re pulling the show off the air.’ I thought, ‘That it, it’s over. I’m never coming back on the air,’” he said, noting that his audience was already seated in the El Capitan Theatre waiting for the show.
What followed the suspension was a chaotic public spectacle. “I’m followed by 20 paparazzi cars, TMZ people jumping in front of me on the way home.” Kimmel even detailed the invasive media presence over his home: “There are two helicopters following us home. I hadn’t had makeup on yet, so my bald spot was not painted in. This is something I did not want America to see.”
He compared the shock of the suspension to enduring “a DUI in L.A., three days in jail where I couldn’t say anything.”
Toward the end of the interview, Colbert asked Kimmel about the political context of the event—namely, the fact that the President of the United States had publicly celebrated his unemployment.
Kimmel responded with palpable emotion: “I never imagined that we’d ever have a president like this, and I hope we don’t ever have another president like this again. I never even imagined there would ever be a situation in which the president of our country was celebrating hundreds of Americans losing their jobs. But somebody who took pleasure in that—that to me is the absolute opposite of what a leader of this country is supposed to be.”
